The Ghost

I linger around your life. Sometimes you see me. Usually when you need me. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you touch me.

I died several weeks ago. The death was painful. I underestimated the hunger, you see. It was bigger than me. Bigger than what I can hold onto.

I was near you, and the hunger -- it wouldn't leave me alone. It taunted me. Tortured me.

I tried to control it. I couldn't it. I drank to dull it. It didn't work. I drank more, but all it did was dull my control of it instead. And the hunger took over.

I'd fought it for so long. I was tired of fighting. I let it win. I didn't know, even as I surrendered, how very big it was. And the things I dreamed of, the things that in my mind were perfect, were clouded, muddled and messy. If I could fall on my knees and beg for it to be taken back, I would. The kiss I wanted, I dreamed of, should have been left in my mind. I couldn't handle it. Somehow, I always knew I wouldn't be able to.

The days that followed were a bloody mess of humiliation and self-loathing, my death pangs. By the end of the dying process, I was wrung out of tears and the moment before my heart burst, the pain was agonizing. But then, blessed peace. Blessed quiet. I never knew how loud my beating heart was until it was gone.

And yet I live. I live on. The hunger, though it slept, still stirs. But now I respect it, and know how to handle it. I am a ghost. The hunger keeps my body, my lifeless body, in motion like a puppet master.

I float through the night, the chilly air. I don't feel cold. I feel the breeze pass me by as I fly, I float. The moon lights my way. The night is clear. I am a ghost.

I haunt you.

You sleep. You don't know I am here. I float in the air above you. I look at your sleeping face. I am jealous of your peace. I look at your mouth. Your mouth that has kept me awake for hours, denying me the peace you sleep in blissfully. For my crimes, I need only to show your lips, your mouth, as evidence, and certainly any jury would acquit me for my temporary insanity.

I float closer, closer. I see your face move a bit. Your eyelids twitch. You sense my haunting now. I can see it. You breathe in my perfume. My nightgown is pale silk. It feels weightless, like me, floating. I can touch you, because it is just your dream. It is just my haunting.

I barely touch your hair, gently, and a faint smile touches your sleeping mouth. I smile too. This is a good dream, my love. Just a dream.

I am closer now, my body touches yours, though I am still suspended in air. I touch your face, my mouth near your ear. I whisper to you. I tell you what I want, and you stir. You turn, you let me nearer to your mouth.

"Will you let me?" I whisper.

You lean your head back, as my hands touch you, touch your body, my mouth nuzzles your ear, your neck, and you turn to look at me now. I see a faint question in your eyes.

"It's just a dream...see....see how I float?"

I show you my ghost-like weightlessness.

The questions in your eyes disappear and you close your eyes again, and I see, much like me before my death, that you've surrendered. Surrendered to me.

My hands explore your body as I pull the bed sheets from you, and you turn on your back. I see your mouth, I want it. But after what I've done, I can't bring myself to kiss you. The thought terrifies me. So instead, my mouth again moves to your neck.

Your hands find me. Tonight you can see me. You can touch me.

"Let me give you what you need," I whisper.

"Will you let me?" I whisper. There's really no reason to ask. You already are letting me.

You nod in your sleepiness, and your hands stroke my back through my silky nightgown. It is cool to the touch but you feel my warmth, my heat just under it, like the ocean sun on your cool skin after a swim.

The silk makes it hard to stop touching me, doesn't it? So soft, so addictive. But don't go too far. This is about what you need. And giving you what you need, that's all I need. All I want.

I pull at your clothes. Pull them all away. Your fingers move up to my hair now as my mouth traces your naked skin, and my eyes flutter in pure ecstasy. The purest I have ever known. I feel your fingers coaxing my face to yours. But I can't kiss you, love. I am not worthy. I pull face from your hands. My mouth moves lower. Lower.

I slide you into my mouth. This is all I want. All I ever wanted. We can't see it, but our eyes are fluttering in the same way with each of our sensations overwhelming us. My tongue works you, tasting you, my fingers stroking you, my hands holding you, as I slide you in and out of my mouth. The pace, so slow and excruciating, and you don't want this dream to end. You don't want it to stop.

Don't worry love, I am here. I am here to give you everything you want. Everything you need.

Your hardness on my tongue drives me insane. I give into the hunger and use it for what I want. I control it and give it to you. Slowly, in and out of my hot, wet mouth. Can you feel it? Feel I want this more than you do?

Almost.

My hips writhe in heat as I slide my mouth up and down, faster, you feel my tongue swirling around you, teasing you, and the pressure of my lips around you, all the way down. As far as you can go inside my mouth. And then all the way back up again. My tongue teasing you, licking you, before I slide you deep inside my mouth again. Just a little faster. You sigh again. It drives me harder. Hotter.

I pull my mouth away, and with my body, I press against you, and you are so hard. Starting from my neck, I shimmy my silk-covered body over you, stroking you with it, between my warm breasts, pushing you there, and your hands make fists in your bed sheets.

I move up, stroking you, warm and silky, and then take the bottom of my nightgown, wrapping you in it with my hand, and stroke you with my hand, up and down, through the slippery silk. Faster than my mouth. The sensation drives your back up, head back, and my hand, hot and fast, through the silk, almost getting you there. I can see it, and your eyes open now, and you watch me.

I love your eyes. I want to see your explosion in them.

I pull my hand away now, and your fingers move to the straps of my nightgown, pushing it down as my mouth finds you again. You push it off, lifting me from you so it falls entirely and moves down my body, so you can see me, see my hard nipples as my mouth works you now in a hungry frenzy. Your eyes don't leave me, now half-naked, watching you slide in and out of my mouth, faster, your hands pull my hair, and you're almost there. I feel you tremble on my tongue.

"Give it to me," I whisper to you. And with your head back one last time, I feel you shudder from deep within, and you come for me, come inside my mouth, and as you do, I swallow you more deeply than I have, my tongue working you deep and fast.

My hunger is greedy. It knows no bounds. I want more.

I finally let you go, and wrap my arms around your waist, my cheek on your belly. We lay there quietly for a few minutes.

"Come here," you whisper. I realize this is the first time you've said anything at all.

I float to you, to your side. I am warm and next to you, and you push me onto my back, and pull away my nightgown.

"You want me," I say.

"Yes," you whisper.

I close my eyes, as your hands touch me, touch my body, and I lick my lips as I look at your mouth. It is so close. The hunger groans within me.

To add to my insanity, my lips are so ticklish that I can't take them being touched. Especially by you.

I try to block your hand, but you are quicker than me, and roll me on my back, my fighting you only urging you on. Holding my hands over my head now, your fingers find my lips and the sensation makes my heart race. Makes me turn my head back and forth to get away.

You pull your fingers from my mouth, let my hands go, and with your arm under my neck, you take my mouth with yours. And oh God, the hunger.

I can't let go. Your tongue finds mine. I shake. I try so hard to be quiet. But it is nearly impossible. Your hands dig into my back. Mine are in your hair. I lose my breath. I'd suffocate if I wasn't dead already.

You move over me, above me, and then. Then you are inside of me.

Now it is my back that arches, my eyes that close, and you that goes slowly. So slowly. For both of us. Your hands on my hips, slowly, slowly, we move together, and I float lighter than when I am suspended in the air above you.

I fly higher than my ghostly wings carry me. We fly together. There is no gravity. Nothing holding us to anything but each other. I open my eyes and yours are on me. You move faster now, and I remember that I want to give you what you need, so I move.

I move to push you to your back, never losing you inside me, and I move over you, riding, rocking, running my fingernails down your chest, gently, faster, not hard, not wild, steady. Steady. Rhythmic, on my knees, hips in a circle, hips back and forth. I watch your face. It is hypnotic, watching what is washing over it.

We float higher. Higher, I am carrying you now, lifting you higher, rocking faster, now harder, moving to feeling you in, and out, in and out. We are almost there.

You take me now, you want to be over me. Have that control. You know that's what I need. You want to give me what I need.

And you do. My back arches more. My fingers twist in your bed, dig into your arms, and I can't look in your eyes, but I can't not either.

Now, love. Now.

I drive my fist into my mouth and break the skin with my teeth as my body bursts with life -- the life I've lost. The life I've not missed until now. You've shocked my heart back into beating. And I know you feel it too.

You pull me too you and wrap your arms around me, but I can already feel the air lifting me and taking me from you.

I give you one last kiss. I no longer fear your mouth.

"Stay," you whisper.

"I can't," I say, and touch your face, your mouth softly in a goodbye, as I lower you to your bed in sleep.

I leave you in your peace, and float back into the air, and my silky nightgown clings to me, warm and soft.

Your dreams are sweet.

In your peace, I find mine. In your eyes, my heart beats.

But you don't always see me, unless you need me.

You sometimes don't feel me, and you almost never touch me. I linger around your life. I have no place in it.